From a press release from the Union of Concerned Scientists, we learn that you don’t need to worry anymore about global warming, we can just garden our way to carbon nirvana, that is, if the bugs don’t eat it. -Anthony
WASHINGTON (April 26, 2010) Home gardeners can avoid contributing to climate change by using certain techniques and tools that are more climate-friendly than others, according to a new gardening guide released today by the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The science-based guide explains the connection between land use and global warming, and offers recommendations for conscientious gardeners to maximize the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide their green spaces store and minimize the other global warming gases gardens can emit.
“Many Americans understand that powering our cars and computers overloads our atmosphere with heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide,” said Karen Perry Stillerman, a senior analyst with the UCS Food and Environment Program. “With the right practices, farmers and gardeners can lock up some of that carbon in the soil.”
When too much carbon dioxide and other global warming gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, are released into the air, they act like a blanket, trapping heat in the atmosphere and altering weather patterns around the world, Stillerman explained. Unchecked climate change will have serious consequences for public health and the environment.
Although agriculture can store carbon and reduce other emissions on a much larger scale, gardeners can help. The Climate-Friendly Gardener: A Guide to Combating Global Warming from the Ground Up (www.ucsusa.org/gardenguide) offers five recommendations for gardeners.
1. Minimize Carbon-Emitting Tools and Products. Gasoline-powered lawn mowers and leaf blowers are obvious sources of heat-trapping carbon dioxide. A typical mower emits 20 pounds of carbon dioxide per gallon. Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, which require a lot of energy to produce, also contribute to global warming. The new guide provides several tips for avoiding garden chemicals and fossil-fuel-powered equipment.
2. Use cover crops. Bare off-season gardens are vulnerable to erosion, weed infestation and carbon loss. Seeding grasses, cereal grains or legumes in the fall builds up the soil, reduces the need for energy-intensive chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and maximizes carbon storage. The guide recommends that gardeners plant peas, beans, clovers, rye and winter wheat as cover crops and explains the specific advantages that legume and non-legume cover crop choices have for gardens.
3. Plant Trees and Shrubs Strategically. Planting and maintaining one or more trees or large shrubs is an excellent way to remove more heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over a long period of time. A recent study estimated that the trees in U.S. urban areas store nearly 23 million tons of carbon in their tissues every year. That’s more than all of the homes, cars, and industries in Los Angeles County emit annually, or about as much as all of the homes in Illinois or Pennsylvania emit every year. Well-placed trees also shade buildings from the summer sun or buffer them from cold winter winds, reducing the need for—and cost of—air conditioning and heating. UCS’s guide discusses the most suitable types of trees for a climate-friendly yard.
4. Expand Recycling to the Garden. Yard trimmings and food waste account for nearly 25 percent of U.S. landfill waste, and the methane gas released as the waste breaks down represents 3 to 4 percent of all human-generated heat-trapping gases. Studies indicate that well-managed composted waste has a smaller climate impact than landfills. The UCS guide describes how to create a climate-friendly compost pile.
5. Think Long and Hard about Your Lawn. Residential lawns, parks, golf courses and athletic fields are estimated to cover more than 40 million acres—about as much as all the farmland in Illinois and Indiana combined. A growing body of research suggests that lawns can capture and store significant amounts of carbon dioxide, but some newer studies warn of the potential for well-watered and fertilized lawns to generate heat-trapping nitrous oxide. The science is unsettled, but there are practical things gardeners can do to maximize lawn growth and health with a minimum of fertilizer and water. The new UCS guide summarizes the science and offers tips for homeowners to make their lawns truly “green.”
“Gardening practices alone won’t solve global warming, but they can move us in the right direction, just like installing super efficient light bulbs and using reusable bags,” said Stillerman. “Seventy percent of Americans garden, and they can have a positive impact. Our guide shows them how.”
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h/t to WUWT reader Milwaukee Bob
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What a clever, clever way of trying to brainwash people. Every time you need to say “CO2”, say “heat-trapping carbon dioxide” instead! Brilliant.
Charles Higley says:
May 10, 2010 at 9:36 pm
Hi Charles,
Your figures are correct, but these small engines waste (do not burn) approx 25/30 percent of the gas used. The “20 pounds” mentioned is still on the ‘alarmist’ high side.
I just went to the “Union of Concerned Scientists” website for about 5 minutes. I clicked on Publications and checked out a couple books they were selling. The second book I clicked on was “A Scientist’s Guide to Talking to the Media.” The 8th chapter of that book is titled “The Scientist as a Celebrity and Activist.” I think that says it all.
See for youself: http://www.ucsusa.org/publications/scientist-media-guide.html
First off, they’re probably using an American gallon, not an Imperial gallon, as they refer to Americans in the press release. An American gallon is less than an Imperial gallon, and weighs perhaps 6 pounds.
Makes the 20 pounds of CO2 sound less likely, you say? Hang on.
The gasoline’s weight is mostly carbon. If it were pure octane, C8H18, the 8 carbon atoms in each molecule weigh 8 times 12 = 96 units (because carbon’s atomic weight is about 12) and the 18 hydrogen atoms weigh 18 times 1 = 18 units (because hydrogen’s atomic weight is about 1). So the carbon represents about 96 / (96+18) = 84% of the weight of the gasoline. Call it 5 pounds of carbon in each gallon.
Let’s do the same math for CO2. In each molecule, the carbon atom provides about 12 units of weight, while the oxygen accounts for 2 times 16 or 32 units. So the carbon in CO2 accounts for 12 / (12 + 32) = 27 % of the weight of CO2.
So when gasoline combusts, enough oxygen is added to the 5 pounds of carbon to create 5 pounds / 0.27 = 18.3 pounds of CO2.
OK, I didn’t get exactly 20 pounds. But pretty close. I suspect the difference between the above calculation and UCS’s is in the weight of a gallon of gasoline. I used 6 pounds — a quick google shows a range of values, perhaps according to different octane ratings? But it’s in the right ballpark.
Hope that helps.
Warren asks:
#
Can anyone explain how to turn 10lb (Imperial Gallon) into 20lb Co2?
#
Add in the weight of the oxygen.
Nitrous oxide generated by lawns? Don’t they call nitrous oxide “laughing gas?”
Many of the points in the leaflet are wrong because they confuse statics with dynamics. Generally, it’s carbon in = carbon out over a long term (unless you are making coal or its equivalents). But they forget the long term, which with CO2 and plant growth means that the extra plant growth has to be maintained FOREVER. Not just for that wrongly-calculated 25,000 years for nuclear.
So, unlike nuclear waste, living carbon sequestration plants have to be maintained in perpetuity. Otherwise, they are just a temporary blip in the ageless story of Nature.
Lots more wrong assumptions in the leaflet. If you choose to mow your lawn with a manual push lawn mower, you have to factor in the extra amount of food it takes to provide human energy. It is not axiomatic that there is a carbon saving.
How can people call themselves “Concerned Scientists” when their chosen description of the greenhous effect is so scientifically naive?
The Union of Concerned Scientists, whose chief skill seems to be to regularly put out press releases. Now then, just consider this line of … thought … from their most recent pronouncement:
I wonder how many of these self-righteous, pontificating little greenies practice what they preach, beyond those who have burrowed into the concrete bowels of an urban center.
It seems we are going to get a not so warm summer on the west coast and in order to get a good crop this year I will need to resort to boosting my soil with anthropogenic chemical fertilizer… Viva La Chemistria !!!!
I have a riding mower, and 12,000 sq ft of lawn. But I mow very fast, and consume carbon friendly wine while I mow. I also flash cook my filet Mignon on the grill, helping to rid the world of evil cows that would otherwise destroy the planet. It’s hard, but I do what I can.
These people are SCIENTISTS?
Am I the only one here that knows gasoline is heavier than water? That’s why the Hollywood stereotype of a torpedoed WWII gasoline tanker burning the poor survivors in the water is Grade A bs. Crude oil may float, gasoline doesn’t. A standard US gallon of water weighs, if memory serves, 7.47 lbs and a gallon of gasoline more like 8 lbs. So, to repeat an above question, exactly how does 8lbs become 20lbs without some accomplices? L
That’s awfully nice of the concerned scientists, but the organic farmers are miles ahead of them. They have been there, done that, and spread the word years ago. Unlike those who have locked themselves in sterile Ivory Towers, the common folk have been practicing what they preach. C02, that’s one of the building blocks of Life on Earth. If a little gets by what I grow it’s no big deal. Share some with the next place down the road. No need to get greedy. C02 is just another building block of Life on Earth.
Betcha that’s whats got the Aliens all in a bunch. They hate it.
Oh, and btw… Steven Hawking says “Don’t talk to Aliens”.
“Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, which require a lot of energy to produce, also contribute to global warming.”
That is as full a disclosure as you could possibly want from these environmentalists. Just eliminate all of the most important scientific progress in growing food, and they’ll be content.
Let’s look at these dreadful “synthetic fertilizers,” which it takes actual “energy to produce.”
The primary ingredients in the Miracle-Gro powder are as follows:
• 5.8% Ammoniacal Nitrogen
• 9.2% Urea Nitrogen
• 30% Available Phosphate
• 15% Soluble Potash
• 0.02% Boron
• 0.07% Copper
• 0.15% Iron
• 0.05% Manganese
• 0.005% Molybdenum
• 0.06% Zinc
So two strikes against fertilizer: it’s “synthetic” and it requires “energy to produce.” That rules out the use of all the elements in the periodic table, now doesn’t it? Again, they are stating what they really do believe. You have to love full disclosure.
Now if you want to start a competition for the most insane and most stupid research conclusions made by “scientists”, I wish to enter this particular item from Australian scientists with considerable help from the Purdue University.
“Half the planet to be too hot in 300 yrs”
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/1050740/half-the-planet-to-be-too-hot-in-300-yrs
And these are the sorts of guys who are moaning that the public is losing respect for scientists!
As far as I am concerned they are right and I am one of those who despite being a layman have had an enormous and maybe in retrospect, a very misguided and very misplaced respect for science and scientists all my life.
Recently read an article about a woman in the midwest building her dream green home. She researched and bought only the best green materials, which is why she bought her roof trusses from New Zealand. She is 78 years old and the house is 2800 sq ft, just for her.
Anthony, a warmist retired scientist contact sent this to me today. Might check it out:
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=116862&WT.mc_id=USNSF_51&WT.mc_ev=click
How do the “emission savings” the Union Of CONcerned “scientists” wants to achieve this way compare to the average volcano eruption? Just wondering….
Here’s a gem from another whacko, Mike Hulme, in the so-called “Science/Environment” section of the BBC:
“In an article for the BBC’s Green Room series, another of the authors, Mike Hulme, writes: “Climate change has been represented as a conventional environmental ‘problem’ that is capable of being ‘solved’.
“It is neither of these. Yet this framing has locked the world into the rigid agenda that brought us to the dead end of Kyoto, with no evidence of any discernable acceleration of decarbonisation whatsoever.”
”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science_and_environment/10106362.stm
Is he coming to his senses? Don’t forget he’s “professor of climate change” so don’t count on it; he’s gotta keep that job. More from him here, attention, he tries to sound a little bit like a skeptic while still not questioning the CO2 dogma so it’s all a bit Monty-Pythonesque.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8673828.stm
I’ve been screaming continuously in terror since Dr. Hansen’s first presentation to Congress in 1998. Should I take a breath?
Just a quick question is the union of concerned scientist’s like the league of extraordinary Gentlemen, like Super Gardeners or something.
Or just Lawn mover fascists?
Ha the good old ElReg has a better one cloud boats or what evername they will give them.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/11/silver_lining/
Shows you, you can have all the money int he world and still be conned out of your cash.
UK Sceptic May 10, 2010 at 10:56 pm
These people are SCIENTISTS?
Who else would think anything north of the Florida border actually *grows* in the winter?
ROM said:
“As far as I am concerned they are right and I am one of those who despite being a layman have had an enormous and maybe in retrospect, a very misguided and very misplaced respect for science and scientists all my life.”
I’ll second that. I see one of the perpetrators is a Professor Dear. Maybe that should be Dear, oh dear, oh dear? What’s the plural for people from ANU?
Maybe someone can get through to them and the Union of Crackpot Scientists that an essential attribute of coal is that it is a fossil – fossilised vegetation – and all of the billions of tons of carbon that was fixed by that vegetation must have come from CO2 in the atmosphere. And growing conditions back then were evidently excellent – we don’t have anything comparable now. So putting some of that carbon back in the atmosphere where it came from is more likely to recreate those excellent growing conditions than the wasteland scenario envisaged by these scaremongers.
A bunch of mostly lay people calling themselves ‘concerned scientists’ are an advocacy group, nothing more or less and their grand title is a fraud. A fraudulent title gives no hope for honest comment from them. People who enjoy gardeneing (and I’m not one of them) should get on with it and take no notice of this dishonest group who are attempting to make gardeners feel guilty for indulging in normal and perfectly acceptable practices.
First they can genetically engineer a new version of E. Coli that can also break down cellulose. Make it a robust strain that will readily propagate worldwide in a natural fashion and supplant existing E. Coli strains.
Then we can forget about mowing since grass is now a food crop, just go outdoors and graze in our yards. The vegans will be happy, PETA will be happy, and the Union of Concerned Scientists can stop being so concerned. Global warming averted, planet is saved.
Then the news reports will warn of the expected alarming rise in cancer and heart disease since the dietary fiber is now being consumed instead of doing something useful. Many experts will be sounding the alarm on the impeding peril, backed with alarming evidence from their computer models.
*sigh* I think they really need to pin “Federated” to the front of their Society’s name.